In Forrester's Services Sourcing Playbook research, my colleagues and I maintain that it is critical for companies embarking on an outsourcing journey or trying to optimize their existing outsourcing relationships to ask themselves the following 10 questions in order to assess maturity and identify weaknesses. Without effective project and program management, internal process consistency, management and change control processes, and a mature vendor management function, it will be difficult -- or nearly impossible -- for organizations to work with external IT services suppliers effectively.
1. Project management track record.
2. Project management expertise.
3. Central program management.
4. Communication and collaboration tools.
5. Internal process consistency.
6. Software development process maturity.
7. Requirements definitions and management capability.
8. Managing to SLAs.
9. User acceptance testing rigor.
10. Vendor management function.
